The Temporal Void (ARC)

by Peter F. Hamilton

  The clients gasped in consternation, looking round to spot Edeard.

  'Everyone else is now entitled to a free night with my girls. Please make your way up the stairs. Quickly gentlemen, thank you.'

  As the doubtful clients did as they were told, Tannarl produced a large pistol which he checked casually. Several of Ivarl's lieutenants had also appeared on the gallery, equally well armed. There was no way Edeard could get up the stairs unnoticed, the group of doormen at the bottom were pressed close together, and using their third hands to form a barrier. Every client was scrupulously checked over before they were allowed up.

  When Edeard used his farsight to probe down, he couldn't find any tunnel directly underneath the House of Blue Petals. It would be easy enough for him to smash through one of the doors, but to do that he'd have to drop his concealment. And that was what this was all about, he realized. Ivarl must be desperate to know how Edeard gathered information. Right now he simply suspected.

  Edeard looked at the pistols lining up around the gallery. Again, he could protect himself, but at the cost of concealment. He couldn't decide if he'd be safer standing under the gallery, or moving round when they started shooting.

  The last of the clients scuttled up the stairs.

  'I know you're here,' Ivarl called down. Tannarl aimed his pistol down into the bar, and fired. The noise was thunderous. Edeard flinched as the bullet smacked into a high backed chair, blowing a big chunk of wood out of the back. He'd never seen a bullet that powerful before.

  Ivarl laughed, and pointed his own pistol down. Edeard scuttled to the side of the bar and crouched down. The barrage of shots which followed sent splinters and clumps of cushioning feathers flying through the air. Some of the lieutenants had a grand time shooting abandoned glasses on the tables.

  Ivarl held his hand up and the firing stopped. 'Ready to say hello, yet, my young friend?'

  Edeard looked across the floor. It was covered in debris now, and cushioning feathers were still fluttering through the air. He would never be able to walk across it without disturbing something. They'd see him instantly.

  Ivarl began to reload his pistol, slotting unusually long bullets into the cylinder. 'They say you come from the country somewhere back west,' he said casually. 'That probably means you're unfamiliar with parts of our city and how it works. Everyday stuff the rest of us take completely for granted. For instance, did you know that if there's a fire the walls simply repair themselves? In a month, you'd never even know anything happened.'

  Edeard eyed the back of the bar. He might be able to make it to the rear storeroom without making too much commotion.

  One of the wooden pedestals began to tilt as a third hand pushed it. Then it fell over, sending the colourful globe crashing down. The glass smashed. Liquid splashed out. Edeard gave it an alarmed look, he hadn't known the globes contained anything. That was when he realized the liquid was actually Jamolar oil, used in lanterns everywhere on Querencia except Makkathran, where there was no need. The remainder of the globes were shoved over, smashing to flood oil out across the floor. He watched it spreading towards him with growing alarm. This was getting serious, he wasn't sure his shield could cope with fire and these bullets. The oil was getting very close to the nearest stove.

  Ivarl finished loading his pistol, and snapped the chamber back. 'Come out come out wherever you are.'

  Edeard looked above the gang lord. The ceiling which vaulted across the whole bar was inset with broad lighting rosettes whose lips extended down to the walls in a scribble of slender volutes. Their pale-orange radiance was at its strongest. He ordered them off, and to remain off. The bar was plunged into darkness, with the flickering coal flames behind the stove grilles shedding tenuous fans of light. He leapt up and started sprinting for the door.

  A pale silver light flared above and behind him, revealing his splashing footprints.

  'Huh?' Edeard twisted round to see both Ivarl and Tannarl encased in a glowing nimbus.

  'You're not so special, Waterwalker,' Ivarl jeered. 'You can't even walk on fire.' He thrust his hand out. The glow brightened all along his arm, then tiny sparks were cascading from his fingertips, falling down from the gallery like a phosphorescent spray.

  Edeard dropped his concealment. The oil ignited.

  Flames soared up from the slick floor. A vicious blast of air knocked Edeard into the piano. The shield he'd flung round his body just managed to survive the impact, mitigating the blow. He didn't dare breathe as the flames surged round him, reaching far above his head.

  Up on the gallery the girls were screaming as the fire licked up round the wooden railings. Thick smoke churned through the air.

  'I see you!' Ivarl shouted victoriously. He started shooting.

  Edeard dived for the floor, ploughing up a thin wave of flaming oil which sizzled across his shield, barely an inch from his clothes and face. He was managing to ward off the worst of the heat, but his skin felt as if he was immersed in acid. His leather coat was smouldering. Still he didn't dare draw a breath. Bullets punched into the floor beside him, scattering razor-sharp splinters. Up on the gallery, the squealing girls were fleeing down corridors. Terrified clients shoved them aside in their own haste to reach safety. Ivarl and his lieutenants remained steadfast, their shields protecting them from the worst of the flames. They fired away manically with their pistols.

  Bullets started to strike Edeard as his attackers drilled through the fire with their farsight. They were like hammer blows on his back, sending pulses of agony along his spine to explode in his brain. He couldn't sustain his shield much longer. He desperately needed air.

  His thoughts pushed down hard into the floor, willing escape, pleading Help me! and the floor miraculously changed. He started to fall. There was nothing below him. A bullet hit the shield at the back of his head. He screamed, and blacked out.

  * * * *

  Edeard woke to a uniform pain that throbbed horribly. Even before he was fully conscious, he threw up. After that, he simply lay where he was in the hope the pain would fade. His hands and cheeks were sore where the heat from the flames had penetrated his shield. He could feel bruises all over his back. Bright light made him blink sticky tears from his eyes.

  Slowly he began to shuffle round and sit up, wincing at every move. It was very quiet. He managed to focus. What he saw made little sense.

  He was lying on the floor of a great tunnel. Not as wide as those which mirrored Makkathran's canals, but perfectly circular. Nor was there any water trickling along the bottom. The walls were as smooth as glass, which is what they could well have been made from. He couldn't be sure, for they glowed with a painful intensity. A proper white light, too, not Makkathran's usual orange. In fact this whiteness had a shade of purple blended in, which was why his eyes wouldn't stop watering. Up the curve of I he wall, was a line of scarlet points which shone with equal intensity. They stretched out on either side of him as far as he could see. And that was the problem, he couldn't see any kind of end to the tunnel, not in either direction.

  Edeard clambered to his feet, wincing as he gingerly probed his back with his fingertips. His coat was ruined, the leather was hard and cracked, with some strips flaking off as if a knife had been slashing at him. His boots were also in a bad way, the drosilk resin soles had blackened and turned soft. Where he'd lain on the tunnel it was smeared with patches of oil. He eased himself out of his coat, and patted the drosilk waistcoat underneath. The weave had several loose dints. It had probably saved his life he admitted. When he touched the back of his head he gasped at the pain from the lump.

  'Thank you,' he said out loud to the city, and slowly sank back down again. He knew he was going to have to rest up for a while. His farsight couldn't reach further than a few inches through the tunnel wall. By now he'd decided he was in one of the very deep tunnels which lay a long way underneath the usual canal tunnels he used. If so, then he was really alone in a way he'd never been before. Nobody had been down here since the c
ity was built, and he still didn't know what kind of creatures those might have been. Whoever they were, they'd certainly built very well, though why they would want to build a lighted tunnel like this was beyond his comprehension. But then, that was true of the whole city.

  He tried to relax, though it was difficult. Without the city's usual background babble of longtalk which he always ignored, the isolation was quite crushing. He was also angry at himself for what happened in the House of Blue Petals. Of course Ivarl would figure things out eventually. Concealment was not a secret in this city, not among the Masters, and quite a few others. And that ability Ivarl had, the glow that surrounded both him and Tannarl, the sparks, that was something Edeard had never heard of before. Now though, he wasn't entirely surprised, not since that final night he'd spent with Ranalee.

  Like all the Grand Family daughters, Ranalee was a lovely-looking girl. She had raven hair which she (well, her maids, anyway) brushed straight every morning so that it would fall halfway down her back. Her face was also long, with narrow eyes, and a cute little nose. Again, all nice features, except in combination they gave the impression of coldness. That seemed to be another eternal feature of Makkathran's aristocracy, the richer or more powerful the family, the less laughter was to be found in their lives. However, she was fiendishly enjoyable in bed. And, truth be told, he was rather excited at the way she spent a couple of weeks manoeuvring Kristiana out of the picture. That single-minded possessiveness when focused on him alone made her even hotter.

  He certainly didn't object when she announced they would be spending the weekend at a family-owned lodge out on the Iguru. Macsen and Boyd enviously wished him luck. He'd often wondered afterwards if they were being prophetic.

  The lodge was a work of art, made from carved timbers and decorated with a tasteful excellence which only the Gilmorn money could provide. He enjoyed the very human architecture after the city's relentless non-human appearance. They took 'almost no one' with them, as Ranalee defined the five servants who were there to cater to her every whim. At night she dismissed the staff to their cottage. 'Outside their farsight range,' she explained with relish, 'because we won't be able to keep a seclusion haze going.' He was led into the main bedroom with its huge normal bed, one with a wooden frame and springs and a feather mattress; the first he'd slept on since Plax, he realized with a fond recollection of Franlee. Ranalee made him wait while she attired herself in some of the most expensive lingerie produced by the city's couturiers. Never before, Edeard thought, had so much money been so incredibly well spent. It must have been the wine and being graced with such a vision that left him so vigorously aroused. Ranalee exploited that state and her own sexuality quite ruthlessly. Sweet little Franlee would have been appalled by their behaviour.

  'I like that you're so receptive,' Ranalee told him as they lay side by side on the lavender-scented sheets. Ranalee, he'd discovered, wasn't the kind of girl who wanted to cuddle afterwards. Candelabras in each corner of the room produced a mild yellow light, enabling him to see the expression of distant satisfaction on her face as she stared up at the bed's embroidered canopy. 'On every level,' she added.

  'Yes,' he said, not quite sure what she was saying.

  'I have a proposition for you. I'm sure Kristiana and others have made it, but I have the contacts and ability to make it work better than they ever could. And in addition, you wouldn't be entirely dependent on Gilmorn money, which for someone like you would be quite important, I imagine.'

  'Uh, what kind of proposition?' Edeard was still reliving the last couple of hours. He'd never been so ferocious before, it was an abandon she had demanded and responded to in kind. The exhilaration had been overwhelming, making him desperate for it never to end.

  She turned her head to give him a shrewd stare. 'I marry you, and arrange for rewarding contacts with all those desperate third and fourth daughters.'

  'Marry?' he blurted. They'd known each other for a few weeks.

  'Yes. I am a second daughter, you know.'

  'Er, yes. That's very flattering, Ranalee, but I'm not quite sure, er, what I want.'

  'Well it's about time you seriously started thinking about it. You have value now, you should capitalize on it.'

  Edeard wondered if he had misheard something. 'Capitalize?'

  'Well face it, for all you're popular and interesting, you'll never be Mayor.'

  'Why not?' he asked indignantly.

  Ranalee laughed. 'You're not one of us, are you? You don't belong to a Grand Family.'

  'The Mayor is elected by the city.'

  'Dear Lady, are you joking?'

  'I can make it to Chief Constable. As a Grand Council member I'd be eligible to put my name forward.'

  'With our family backing, you probably could get that far. But when did the Chief Constable ever make Mayor?'

  'I don't know,' he admitted.

  'Never.'

  'Oh.'

  'So don't be so silly. I'm talking about the future.'

  'All right.' He was stung by the crack about him not being able to achieve much on merit. 'What's the proposition?'

  'I told you. I'll be your gatekeeper.'

  'I'm… sorry, I don't get any of this.'

  She rolled on to her side, and reached down between his legs. 'Exploit your potential. That's what the families truly value. These, to be precise.' Long-nailed fingers closed around a very sensitive piece of anatomy.

  'Potential?'

  'Lady, you're ignorant. I just didn't realize how much. How do you think families like mine achieved our position?'

  'Some of it was luck, being in the right place at the right time in history, some of it was down to hard work, your family especially. Your ancestors took huge risks exploring new markets with their ships.'

  'Crap. It's breeding.'

  'Right.'

  'You doubt me? The one thing the families cherish more than anything is a strong psychic ability. That's what we use to maintain our position; farsight that can see what our rivals are up to inside a seclusion haze, a third hand strong enough to protect ourselves, and a few other useful little talents, too. We prize that trait above all others in a mate. That's what every family bloodline nurtures. And now you've walked out of the wilds and into the city, a simple country boy with more strength than a dozen family sons put together. We want you, Water-walker. We want what these contain.' Her fingers closed tighter, nail tips sharp on his scrotum.

  Edeard kept very still. His tongue licked round his lips as she held him on the threshold of pain. 'Okay, I get it now.'

  'Good boy. So I marry you.' She smiled and stretched provocatively. Her voice purred, echoing round inside his skull. 'You get this magnificent body whenever you want and in whatever fashion you desire. And you've already discovered how fantastic that will be for you. I'm everything a man dreams of. Aren't I?' The way she spoke it was a taunt, a challenge.

  'Yes.' He couldn't lie to her. That same husky voice had goaded him throughout the night. It spoke directly to some animal deep inside, awaking the most shameful desires. Yet she was the one suggesting them, rejoicing at how bad their bodies could behave. The notion of every night for the rest of his life spent like this one was igniting a fever inside him. He would fight every bandit on Querencia to make it happen.

  'I will yield to you,' she promised meekly. 'You will father a host of lovely little girls in me. They will run round the mansion and live a life of luxury and make you so unbelievably happy while you clear the scum out of the city and ascend to the Chief Constable's office. That's by day,' she vowed tantalizingly.

  'And by night?'

  Ranalee's smile mellowed, she eased her grip a fraction. Her lips were now so close they brushed his ear. 'I will bring a multitude of the city's minor daughters to our bed.' Now her hand crept up to hold his stone-hard member. Edeard smiled in utter bliss as she directed his imagination to the satisfaction his masculinity could achieve for him. 'Each of them yearning for you to sire a daughter. They will pay to
receive your fulfilment again and again.'

  'Yes,' he groaned ecstatically.

  'Beautiful girls. Young girls. Girls like Kristiana married off to equal nonentities out in the merchant classes or the militia - our country cousins. They'll have the daughters who'll go on to marry the next generation of first sons. Every family will be in a fervour for them.' She sucked in her cheeks thoughtfully, suddenly playful. 'Maybe I'll be able to negotiate a percentage of the dowry as part of your stud fee.'

  Edeard was suddenly bedevilled by an image of Mistress Florrel, which he must have allowed to slip out.

  Ranalee laughed delightedly. 'Her! Yes, that's why she was so sought after, she is an amazingly strong psychic; I'm four generations down from her myself. And don't forget Rah, either.'

  'Rah!'

  'Why do you think every Grand Family claims to be descended from him? We actually are. A third hand strong enough to cut through the city's crystal wall, who wouldn't want that?'

  'I never knew any of this,' he said softly. It all made such perfect sense now she'd laid it out.

  'Within three generations your descendants will rule Makkathran. That's less than a hundred years, Waterwalker. And then you will be king in all but name. Think what you can achieve with such power.'

  'I will break them,' he said, eager now she had opened his eyes to so many opportunities. 'I will destroy the gangs. The city will regain all it has lost since Rah's time. The Skylords will come again to carry us off to Odin's Sea.'

  'I will go there with you.'

  'Yes, together!'

  'As it is this night, it will always be for you. I pledge myself to that cause. Your pleasure will never end.' She rose above him, face gleaming triumphant in the tranquil candle light. 'Now you will celebrate our union,' she told him, her whisper filling the room in a crescendo.